Many products commonly used by the consumer ignite quite readily when exposed to high temperatures. Typical of such products are articles of clothing, various products covered with fabrics, paper goods, products made from wood and plastic, and many others. Disposable soft goods in particular, burn easily.
It is known that various materials can be rendered flame-retardant by treating them with various bromine-containing compounds. Most of the bromine-containing compounds suggested for use in flame-proofing are organic compounds. These compounds have been found to have certain deficiencies; i.e., they are volatile, do not have sufficient resistance to laundering, exude from substrates to which they are applied, and sometimes cause dermatological problems. Thus, there is a need to provide a flame-retarding, bromine-containing compound which overcomes the above deficiencies.
It is well known that poly(vinyl bromide) can be prepared by the free radical innitiated polymerization of vinyl bromide. However, the reaction proceeds very slowly when conventional methods of initiating polymerization are employed, and impractically low conversions of monomer to polymer are obtained. Attempts have been made to achieve more rapid polymerization of vinyl bromide and to obtain high yields by using relatively large amounts of free radical initiators and by carrying out the reaction for long periods of time. However, the polymers obtained in such cases are colored, which is indicative of poor thermal stability. For example, Ulinska and Mankowski, Studia Soc. Sci. Torun, Sect. B., Vol. 2, No. 2 (1960), report that emulsion polymerization of vinyl bromide at 50.degree.C for 6 hours using 1.5 percent of potasium persulfate as free radical initiator gave only a 69 percent yield of a yellow polymer. They also report an 88 percent yield of polymer with the same initiator concentration after a reaction time of 24 hours, and that the product obtained after drying was dark brown. They were able to obtain essentially colorless polymers in very low yields (3 to 14 percent) in short reaction times (6 hours) by solution polymerization, but attempts to improve yields by increasing the reaction time gave brown products.